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So far I’m doing okay in this challenge to write at least one post per month. This is February, so with this post I’m two for two so far…

Right, this is quite a quick post with something more substantial to follow later in the month (hopefully). I want to talk about a service called Boomerang (no – not the cartoon network I remember from the late 1990s but www.boomerangrentals.co.uk).

I’m sure that plenty of gamers out there have heard of this service, but I had not. Big thanks to the guys over at Midlifegamer.net and their podcast duo for passing on the message about this. I you are even remotely interested in games (video or board), childish humour and name calling then head over and check them out.

So, what is boomerang?

Boomerang is a rental service for video games. Remember LoveFilm? Back when they posted stuff out to you? Physical discs of the films you wanted to watch? Well this is the same kind of thing, but for games.

They have a number of tiers which increase in cost as you progress up, the most expensive tiers guaranteeing the newest games sooner and allowing you more games at a time. I decided to give their free trial a go, and subscribed to their lowest offering for after that.

For the cost of £3.99 a month (that’s less than the price of a burger) they’ll send me one game a month which is at least 6 months old. Now that might not sound brilliant, but lets just think about that for a second. All those games I missed, I can now get for a minimal fee. All those crazy Japanese RPGs that I wouldn’t want to risk spending £50 on to see if I like them? I can now rent them. Try them and see what I think. It also means that each month I’ll definitely have something that I can write about on here rather than hoping that the Playstation Plus games are something I want to play.

How does it work?

Sign up on their website and you get a three week free trial, pick your subscription level (the top tier available to new customers is £15.99) and away you go. You can borrow games for pretty much any current platform (and a couple of older ones -including handhelds like the PSP/Vita or 3DS). Select the games you want – They suggest having more than five in your list at any time (I’m guessing it allows them some flexibility with what game(s) to send you.

That’s pretty much it. I signed up in my lunch hour and a few days later I had an email telling me my first game was being posted out. A day or so later there’s a little envelope on my doormat. The disc for Far Cry Primal.

Put it in the PS4 and away you go. Apparently you need to hang onto the envelope to send the game back when you are done. There’s also a freepost slip to go with it, simples as the advert says.

What is the selection like?

There’s a pretty decent selection of games, and you can easily hide any that aren’t available on your subscription, which is nice. I put together a list of about nine items I’m interested in before I even include any of the RPGs mostly because I am still playing Final Fantasy (I’m not going to play two epic games alongside each other). I’ve gone mostly for action or shooter games… the first one they had to hand was obviously Far Cry Primal (Which will be the subject of my next blog I suspect).

Overall I’m pretty impressed so far. Although they are a well established company and have probably been doing this for quite a while now so I’d expect nothing less.

My list currently includes things that I’ve missed out on like Watch Dogs, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst or The Order 1886 that I would like to play, but that will probably never turn up as a free monthly game from Playstation.

I should probably point out (explicitly) that I have no connection with Boomerang (the rental service or the 1990s cartoon network of the same name) – I once tried to throw a boomerang and it didn’t work. I just thought I’d share my experience (with the game rental people, not the tool) and maybe help out some gamers who have bills to pay, like me to play more on a budget.

Keep your eyes peeled for my thoughts on Far Cry Primal later in the month (and remember I’m playing it alongside FFXV so it might be a while).